Xperia PLAY

The Sony Xperia PLAY aka the Playstation Phone is now available from Verizon for $199 on contract. It includes a gamepad, 4″ screen, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and probably most importantly, runs stock Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). This phone has been leaked time and time again and there are little surprises left, but we still want to give it the full DL experience. We’re starting with a quick hands-on… (more…)

If you were looking to invest in a new Android phone, then today wouldn’t be a bad day to head over to your nearest Verizon store. The LG Revolution ($249), Sony Xperia PLAY ($199) and Motorola DROIDX2 ($199) are all available. One of them run’s on their brand new 4G LTE network, another is a gaming machine, and the last is Big Red’s first dual-core phone. We’ll be doing a bunch of coverage on both the Xperia PLAY and DROIDX2 starting today, so if you want to wait and see our thoughts on them, just hang out here. The LG Revolution on the other hand has us torn – it’s basically the DROID Charge (our review), but without Google Search or that amazing Super AMOLED Plus screen. Oh, they did toss in Netflix though.

Dave Kover – a continuous giver to the Android community. Creator and maintainer of some of Android’s most popular themes, has now put up on the Market individual applications for all of the aforementioned devices’ wallpapers; putting them in easy to use, slick user interfaces. All users must do is download the application, hit Wallpapers from a home screen, then select from the different folders. All the images have been taken from the individual system dumps and packaged nicely for us. Simply hit the links below and be taken to the Market for download. All free.

The Sony Xperia PLAY from Verizon went on pre-sale last night at midnight, but wasn’t supposed to ship to customers until around 5/25 with the actual launch date as 5/26. Well, it looks like those of you that jumped on it early might be in for a treat as one of our readers just sent over this screenshot of a confirmation from Big Red that his phone has been shipped and should arrive by May 23 (Monday). That’s right, his stock Android 2.3 gaming machine will be at his doorstep days before it ever hits a store shelve. So tempting.

Both the newly announed DROIDX2 and Xperia PLAY are up on Verizon’s website – one of them to buy right now and the other to pre-order. The DX2 will likely ship out to your house this afternoon or tomorrow, but as we told you yesterday, can be purchased in non-corporate VZW stores today if you don’t feel like waiting. The Xperia PLAY on the other hand is just a pre-order and will ship some time around 5/25. Each phone is listed at $199 on 2-year contract or $449 at full retail. Again, we’re loving this new approach to full retail pricing from Big Red – please keep it up.

Next Thursday is shaping up to be a huge Android launch day for Verizon, with the DROIDX2, Xperia PLAY and possibly even the LG Revolution all becoming available. One is dual-core, another is stock Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and the other is 4G LTE, but are any of them your next phone? Can a qHD screen, gaming pad, or front-facing camera help you decide? And not to hi-jack this poll before you’ve even hit the voting part, but can you imagine a phone that combined all of these things?

It’s May 16 and if we were going to see a roll out of Gingerbread to the DROIDX, we probably would have seen some signs from Verizon that it was actually happening. As you may have guessed, we haven’t seen any of them, so we’ll have to assume that it won’t be here today or maybe even this week for that matter. There are a couple of rumors floating around behind the scenes that suggest it may not be out until after the DROIDX2 hits on May 26. And why would they do that?

Well, because the DX2 is also looking more and more like it won’t launch with Android 2.3, but 2.2 instead. All of those leaked pictures we’ve seen from the user guide and launch kit with blue Blur are not Gingerbread according to our sources. We were worried that they might slap the new Blur over 2.2 just like we saw on the Bionic at CES and those fears appear to have come true. We’ve been told that the device guide for employees also clearly says “Froyo” and that dev builds of the phone are still running 2.2. Just think, is there any way they would allow the original DX to be running newer software than its replacement? They wouldn’t let it happen.

And to add to this rumor, we’ve also been told that when the Xperia Play launches on the 26 alongside the DX2, it will be dubbed the “first Verizon phone running Gingerbread.”

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